According to some experts, smart, interconnected building technologies are the next major step in the evolution of buildings. With the increase of the prevalence of the “Internet of Things” and the falling costs of sensors and wireless technology, the smart building technology and implementation market has a huge potential. Yet, changing an industry doesn’t happen overnight. Proponents of smart buildings must still overcome a number of obstacles before smart buildings become ubiquitous, including barriers with safety (cybersecurity), technology (interoperability), and humanity (acceptance).

Realizing the economic and environmental benefits of energy-efficient building designs requires attentive and well-informed operation. Providing real-time feedback to occupants and operators about actual energy use is a powerful tool in pursuit of this goal. However, without context, this feedback can be unhelpful or even misleading. Control limits contextualize feedback by establishing reasonable ranges for the reported data that are tailored to a building’s unique characteristics. This presentation is an introduction to two related methods of establishing control limits for building energy consumption using a combination of predictive modeling, historical data analysis, and energy-conservative logic.

Commissioning consists of systematically documenting that specified components and systems have been installed and started up properly and then functionally tested to verify that systems are complete and functioning properly upon project completion. Proper functional performance test development plays a big role in the success of commissioning. The intent of this portion of the seminar is to present various means & methods for functional performance testing. Means and methods such as control modification, injection, stimulation and actual event will be discussed in depth.